The present invention relates to the field of digital image manipulation and, more particularly, to utilizing three overlapping images for exposure correction during panoramic image stitching.
Panoramic images and video are becoming popular as a visual medium. Advances in photographic and video technology have made the capture and creation of panoramic images and video easier and available to general consumers, not just professionals.
A panoramic image stitching system (e.g., software application) is used to stitch the images together. In order to create a cohesive panorama, the image stitching system often performs a variety of manipulations on the images. A common manipulation is exposure correction. While exposure is often considered a setting of the camera, time and environmental changes are also factors.
Conventional approaches to exposure correction are based upon an overlapping region between two images. Since this is a comparison of just two data points, the exposure is often skewed when the values differ by a considerable margin.